a little hard to define, but basically how old people in china hang out. the wikipedia article makes it sound all high class and pro, but its actually super chill. whenever i go pretty much anywhere outside, i bring a backpack with a big thermos of boiling water, and a tea set. at any point i can do a tea session with anyone. its just what i do to hang out. my favorite type is puerh, which isnt super well known in these parts. if you’re ever in the byward market area, lemme know if you wanna try some and if im free we can do an impromptu tea sesh.

heres my tea set: (ill put some images at some point) heres me drinking tea with some highschoolers on top of a giant rock we found: tea sesh with online friends during a meetup in slovenia, under a bridge cuz it started raining:

you may be wondering, why are your cups so small, what the heck is that bigger cup, where’s your teapot? that bigger cup is called a (link)gaiwan. its a lidded cup that you put tea leaves in, then use as a teapot. after putting hot water in it and waiting a bit, you tip the lid inwards, and pour the steeped fluid out. keeping the tip angle small, the leaves stay in the vessel. simple.

i prefer this apparatus over traditional teapots as its easier to steep tea multiple times. the strat is to load up the gaiwan with much more tea than you normally would using other means; think 4g+ for a 100ml vessel, compared to a standard bag of tea which has about 1.5g to make a 200ml cup; then steep it many times (upwards of 8 to even 20 or more!) for a few seconds each, effectively taking “snapshots” of the tea, evolving its flavor over time.

different people have different preferences for the leaf ratio, my favorite is around 7-8g/100ml, which is on the upper end of average amongst the tea folk on the tea server but not too high. as i said above, my favorite type of tea is puerh. specifically ripe puerh (shou) over raw (sheng), though i like raw too. i probably would like sheng more if i had the opportunity to try more of them.

whats this about ripe, raw, shou, sheng, whats puerh? just another kind of tea. theres green tea, black tea, white tea, oolong, and theres also puerh, which can be subdivided further into shou and sheng. sheng is greener and processed similarly to green tea. has a more floral/vegetal scent. shou looks completely different, its dark brown and smells like dirt. well its more like earthier, woody, mushroomy and musky. that class of aromas.

probably sounds unpleasant. when making tea for random people, its the one i most often choose to make. its hit or miss, but mostly hits. 90% of people really enjoy it whereas the other 10% try to politely say they like it, but also dont finish the cup and dont want more. its ok lol you wont hurt my feelings, you just have bad taste.

math stuff. i will probably document a mix of my online and in person activities here. may include talks i’ve given, seminars/reading groups i’ve organized and participated in, stuff im interested in as well as historical interests, and maybe more.

i find analyses of tap, bottled, and spring waters from around the world, reverse enginner them, and reproduce the identical substance from home.

here i’ll document my explorations in parallel computing, and other home electronics projects.

my dad’s a software engineer. he bought me this arduino / diy electronics set 10-15 years ago, hoping and praying that i would take interest in his field. unlucky for him, i was too adhd to focus time on those things, instead i just played runescape or whatever else 10-15yo me was doing. fast forward 10-15 years, i notice the bin in the corner of my eye and gears are turning. better late than never, right?

i have a system now that enables me to finally get to the things i want to do and be productive etc. i took out the arduino and started tinkering. never really done this shit before aside from a robotics class in highschool i took forever ago, and even then i didnt really have the attention span to get much out of it. (unfortunate, cuz the teacher was super super good). took me 2 whole hours just to be able to make an led blink. the issue was that the arduino lab micropython ide wasnt giving me enough feedback to diagnose the issue, and had to switch to something bulkier, the original arduino ide. and even then, i had to enable “verbose logging” or something like that so that it prints out pretty much everything. then we were good.

anyway turns out arduinos are super, super weak. the (link) arduino micro was trying to use, has as its main processor this “atmega32u4” chip, which if you check the specs of, can pretty much do nothing. and it costs more than a pi pico. which is a gazillion times better. (which turns out is also weaker than the cheaper esp32 which also comes with wifi, go figure.) i went down a big rabbit hole investigating all the limitations and stuff having virtually no experience in the department of home electronics. turns out the benefit of arduino is that its accessible to use as the front facing variables and functions you call look pretty by default, thanks to the work they do over at arduino the company.

in parallel, my gf was interested in parallel computing and/or doing a ml project, using opencv image processing tools. i had the genius idea to use this electro-whatever as motivation to loop her into this. what if we can buy some cheap parts like a camera module, esp32 whatevers, and some pi picos to try both of those? i was warned a bunch by other people like “its not gonna work, pi picos are too small you wont be able to fit kubernetes on it” and some other lame excuses. idc. when theres a will theres a way. if that package wont suit my needs, ill have to find a smaller one that does, or have to make it myself, which would be interesting in its own right. “nooo, even if you reinvent the wheel, there wont be enough processing power left to do anything.” sorry friends, i will be naive and cross that bridge when i get there. that may very well be the case, i certainly dont have the depth of understanding to gauge that possibility at this current state, but i think it would be a very interesting task to dig and really look at coding on the metal, to investigate and determine for sure the feasibility of this endeavor.

you know what? maybe the post format is good. maybe ill add another post when i get to progressing more on this.

maybe just link to my instagram instead?

i throw paint. using a mixture of cheap acrylic paints in tubes, and wall paint in cans, i scoop up globs of pigmented fluid with craft sticks, brushes, knives, my hands, and whatever else i can find nearby, then flick it onto canvas or paper.